Sorry if this topic has been covered before. I did a search without being able to find much info. But now, since Autodesk has dropped Mental Ray from Maya, I was curious about switching to VRay. I know there is a free version of Mental Ray for Maya from Nvidia. But I was watching a Livestream from last year, where Gnomon's Alex Alvarez talks about photogrammetry, and doing realistic renders in Maya. And he mentions that he now renders in VRay. I believe he used to use Mental Ray for renders. I was just wondering if anyone knew why the switch would be a good idea? I heard VRay is faster. I've seen some comparisons online, but it seems like most of the comparisons are not comparing accurately, or with any real production knowledge of working with each render engine. I don't know if Alex reads the forums, as I'm sure he's quite busy. But if he happens to see this and can weigh in, that would be awesome. I, too, have been working with photogrammetry for a few years now, learning all I can, and building a library. And previously, I've done renders (with displacement maps) in Mental Ray. I'm wondering if I should try out VRay, and how steep the learning curve would be in switching? It seems daunting to think about rebuilding all my shaders. But maybe it's not? Thanks in advance.

(On a side note, I did start to play with Arnold, since it now comes with Maya. Some things seemed smoother, workflow-wise. But other things I couldn't get to match my renders from Mental Ray, and I got frustrated. But that could just be my ignorance.)